The Largest Canada, U.S. Grocery Retailers

Groceries are big business, and it may come as a surprise how many grocery retailers rank as some of the biggest retail chains in the world.

Even among home improvement stores, discount stores, drug and convenience stores, and apparel and shoe store chains, these grocers and superstores fall in an elite group of the top 250 largest chains on the globe in terms of revenue earned.

Gathering the Data

The top grocery retailers in the U.S. and Canada include Walmart, Kroger, Costco, Target, and Loblaw, when “top” is measured by sales volume, according to Supermarket News, which gathers information specifically on grocery stores. However, this leaves out certain types of retailers that sell groceries, such as cash and carry stores like Costco.

Each year, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu publishes its Global Powers of Retailing report, which lists the top 250 retail stores across the globe. Deloitte reports on a larger group of retailers including Walmart, Costco, and Target, although these stores sell groceries and other food items alongside a variety of other goods, including household products, toys, and clothing. The Deloitte report classifies these stores as hypermarkets or supercenters instead of grocery stores or supermarkets.

The Retail Rankings

The following list contains the rankings for the 2018 Top 250 supermarkets in the U.S. and Canada and includes listings for hypermarkets and supercenter stores if they have a significant grocery offering.

Each retailer shown is ranked based on its financial performance for 2016, collected and reviewed in June 2017. The information below also includes each chain's 5-year compound average revenue growth rate, which is the mean annual growth rate over the 5-year period from 2011 to 2016.

The stores on the list are numbered to correspond with the list of 250 top global retailers as reported by Deloitte, which also includes retailers in several other areas such as apparel, home improvement and drug stores.

Top Retail Chains Selling Food & Groceries for 2018 by 2016 Sales Volume (out of top 250 global retail chains of all types):